The structure of collaboration is known to be of great importance for the success of scientific endeavors. In particular, various types of social capital employed in co-authored work and projects bridging disciplinary boundaries have attracted researchers’ interest.

Almost all previous studies, however, use samples with an inherent survivor bias, i.e., they focus on papers that have already been published. In contrast, our article examines the chances for getting a working paper published by using a unique dataset of 245,000 papers uploaded to arXiv.

ArXiv is a popular preprint platform in Physics which allows us to construct a co-authorship network from which we can derive different types of social capital and interdisciplinary teamwork.

To emphasize the ‘normal case’ of community-specific standards of excellence, we assess publications in Physics’ high impact journals as success. Utilizing multilevel event history models, our results reveal that already a moderate number of persistent collaborations spanning at least two years is the most important social antecedent of getting a manuscript published successfully.

In contrast, inter- and subdisciplinary collaborations decrease the probability of publishing in an eminent journal in Physics, which can only partially be mitigated by scientists’ social capital.

Starting from a theoretical and methodological foundation of an academic ideology critique, the production, distribution and valorisation of science communication will be analysed in exemplary fashion.

The focus is on the criticism of publishing houses’ business models in the sphere of open Access publishing. These models are propagated and implemented by science and politics.

Thus, academic publications continue to be traded as commodities. The existing relationships of power and domination are thereby reproduced. In contrast, the emancipatory potential of non-commercial science communication based on the digitalisation of production and distribution is shown.

The increase of visibility and transfer of scholar knowledge through digital environments have been followed by the author’s rights abuses such as plagiarism and fraud. For this reason, copyright is increasingly a topic of major importance since it provides authors with a set of rights to enable them to utilize their work and to be recognized as the creators.

The new research methods linked to technological advances (such as data mining) and the emergence of systems such as Open Access (OA) are currently under debate.

These issues have generated legislative changes at the level of the European Union (EU) and its Member States. For this reason, it is relevant that the researchers know how to protect their work and the proper use of another’s work.

Consequently, this research aims to identify the limitations of copyright in the EU and as a specific case in Spain, within the framework of scientific research. For this, the changes in the European and Spanish copyright regulations are analyzed.

The results confirm new exceptions and limitations for researchers related to technological evolution, such as data mining. Additionally, the article incorporates several guidelines and implications for the scientific community.

The objective of this review is to identify all preprint platforms with biomedical and medical scope and to compare and contrast the key characteristics and policies of these platforms. We also aim to provide a searchable database to enable relevant stakeholders to compare between platforms.

Study Design and Setting

Preprint platforms that were launched up to 25th June 2019 and have a biomedical and medical scope according to MEDLINE’s journal selection criteria were identified using existing lists, web-based searches and the expertise of both academic and non-academic publication scientists.

A data extraction form was developed, pilot-tested and used to collect data from each preprint platform’s webpage(s). Data collected were in relation to scope and ownership; content-specific characteristics and information relating to submission, journal transfer options, and external discoverability; screening, moderation, and permanence of content; usage metrics and metadata.

Where possible, all online data were verified by the platform owner or representative by correspondence.

Results

A total of 44 preprint platforms were identified as having biomedical and medical scope, 17 (39%) were hosted by the Open Science Framework preprint infrastructure, six (14%) were provided by F1000 Research Ltd (the Open Research Central infrastructure) and 21 (48%) were other independent preprint platforms. Preprint platforms were either owned by non-profit academic groups, scientific societies or funding organisations (n=28; 64%), owned/partly owned by for-profit publishers or companies (n=14; 32%) or owned by individuals/small communities (n=2; 5%).

Twenty-four (55%) preprint platforms accepted content from all scientific fields although some of these had restrictions relating to funding source, geographical region or an affiliated journal’s remit.

The three most common screening checks related to the scope of the article, plagiarism and legal/ethical/societal issues and compliance. Almost all preprint platforms allow submission to any peer-reviewed journal following publication, have a preservation plan for read-access, and most have a policy regarding reasons for retraction and the sustainability of the service.

Forty-one (93%) platforms currently have usage metrics, with the most common metric being the number of downloads presented on the abstract page.

Conclusion

A large number of preprint platforms exist for use in biomedical and medical sciences, all of which offer researchers an opportunity to rapidly disseminate their research findings onto an open-access public server, subject to scope and eligibility.

However, the process by which content is screened before online posting and withdrawn or removed after posting varies between platforms, which may be associated with platform operation, ownership, governance and financing.

Credibility of scientific claims is established with evidence for their replicability using new data. According to common understanding, replication is repeating a study’s procedure and observing whether the prior finding recurs. This definition is intuitive, easy to apply, and incorrect.

We propose that replication is a study for which any outcome would be considered diagnostic evidence about a claim from prior research. This definition reduces emphasis on operational characteristics of the study and increases emphasis on the interpretation of possible outcomes.

The purpose of replication is to advance theory by confronting existing understanding with new evidence. Ironically, the value of replication may be strongest when existing understanding is weakest.

Successful replication provides evidence of generalizability across the conditions that inevitably differ from the original study; Unsuccessful replication indicates that the reliability of the finding may be more constrained than recognized previously.

Defining replication as a confrontation of current theoretical expectations clarifies its important, exciting, and generative role in scientific progress.

Scholarly communication has arisen as a core academic librarianship competency, but formal training on scholarly communication topics in LIS is rare, leaving many early career practitioners underprepared for their work.

METHODS

Researchers surveyed practitioners of scholarly communication, as defined by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), regarding their attitudes toward and experiences with education in scholarly communication, job responsibilities, location within their academic libraries, and thoughts about emerging trends in scholarly communication librarianship.

RESULTS

Few scholarly communication practitioners felt well-prepared by their graduate training for the core set of primary and secondary scholarly communication responsibilities that have emerged.

They deploy a range of strategies to fill the gap and would benefit from support in this area, from more robust education in graduate programs and through continued professional development.

DISCUSSION

The results of this survey support the assertion that as academic libraries and academic library work have increasingly recognized the importance of scholarly communication topics, library school curricula have not developed correspondingly.

Respondents indicated a low level of formal pedagogy on scholarly communication topics and generally felt they were not well-prepared for scholarly communication work, coming at a significant opportunity cost.

CONCLUSION

Scholarly communication practitioners should create and curate open teaching and learning content on scholarly communication topics for both continuing education as well as adoption within LIS curricula, and LIS programs should develop accordingly, either through “topics” courses or by integrating scholarly communication into and across curricula as it intersects with existing courses.